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Topic: Overload PC Release! (Read 1701 times)

Overload, the Descent spiritual successor developed by Revival Productions, officially releases today for PC! It contains a lengthy 15+ level campaign, challenge (arcade) mode, and fully functional multiplayer. Get ready for mods, too, as a map and level editor is on its way.

Already played the first two levels. Had to turn the effects WAY down in order to get the lag down to tolerable levels because my laptop's rendering capabilities are not quite good enough for the preferred best performance, but despite that, it's visually beautiful and great fun to play. It's Descent...but definitely enhanced, and in a very good way.

Story's been fairly interesting too. For those that don't know, there are little audio logs left scattered throughout the mines that you can pick up and play brief little messages. I would've thought that they'd get annoying after awhile, but thus far they have it, and have only added to the mysterious atmosphere the game generates. They've clearly put a lot of thought into the universe for this outing, more so than Descent ever got, admittedly.

The level design is absolutely stellar. Very D1-esque, but with a lot more color and additional details that make it all very eye-grabbing without overdoing it. The art style, in fact, is still very minimalist in a lot of ways, like what Descent had always favored.

I agree with all your points wholeheartedly.... I've just made it through level 5 (starting on Rookie so I can explore leisurely before I tackle this thing on Hotshot), and I'll reserve judgement until I finish the game, but man. It already feels like everything D1-3 got right, minus everything D1-3 got wrong, with a few new things that only enhance the experience. I can't wait to get through the rest of the campaign.

Get a new laptop man, you've been banging on about that thing for ages now

Well, if technology didn't keep constantly updating itself every time I try to do the very costly upgrades...

The laptop's actually not that old, at least not in relation to other computers I've owned. It's problem was that it's not ever really been a high-end gaming machine, but I knew that from the start when I got it.

As for upgrading, I unfortunately can't afford that right now. Nor can I justify the need for it either when the laptop still performs well in just about every other regard, at least for my usual purposes.

But for Overload, it's really not a big deal--even with all the bells and whistles turned off, it scarcely affects the visual quality of the game at all in any noticeable way. It's literally astounding just how well optimized this game is. I wish Underground was more like that.

Besides, my brother has a high-end computer that runs Overload on default settings like butter, and he's said I'm free to try it whenever its available, so I've got that option to me. Still, I'm going to try and play through it on my laptop first nonetheless. I mean, it's already on there and it does run well enough to play, so...

As for upgrading, I unfortunately can't afford that right now. Nor can I justify the need for it either when the laptop still performs well in just about every other regard, at least for my usual purposes.

Well THAT I understand, I have some troubles with Overload on high detail - and streaming the game is very difficult, but for the most part it runs OK on my 4 year old rig with a mid-range graphics card. The only saving grace of my machine is the CPU but I suffer a bit with memory shortage. Anyone got some spare memory laying around?

I'm probably going to record a Let's Play of the game, but I don't know if I'll do that straight away. I'm currently hard at a work on a new project.

For those interested I clipped this very nice segment from the live stream:

I just played LAN match with my oldest son, he kicked my butt 15-0! Clearly this is Trump's fault! I blame the patriarchy!

Deathmatch Score Equality NOW!

So, I just finished my first campaign run tonight on Rookie, and man. What a game. WHAT. A. GAME. Yeah, I've got some nitpicky criticisms and I did encounter one massive bug (on the final level, no less) that pulled me out of the game pretty badly. But the nitpicks are exactly that, and the bug can be fixed, I'm sure. All I can say is that Overload is the best 6DOF game ever made, and all I want to do now is start it back up again on Hotshot or Ace and really go for it... At least, after I land a few spots in Challenge Mode and prove myself in Multiplayer.

Logged

I, for one, hope this is much, much more than a reconnaissance mission.

So it took longer than I hoped (basically it was often taking me as long as an hour or longer to finish just one level in the latter half of the campaign, and with my current time schedule, that made it harder to justify the time to play it more regularly), but I finally finished the main campaign too. That last level was actually a lot more straightforward than I was expecting, especially given all the build-up leading up to it, and it maybe wrapped things up a bit too nicely and quickly in the space of just one level...but that's really one only major complaint I have.

Those last few levels, though. Things there certainly got...interesting.